The Complex Relationship Between Motherhood and Desistance

Women & Criminal Justice, 26:212–231, 2016 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0897-4454 print/1541-0323 online DOI: 10.1080/08974454.2015.1113153 The Complex Relationship Between Motherhood and Desistance Ronet Bachman Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA Erin M. Kerrison Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA Raymond Paternoster Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA Lionel Smith Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA Daniel O’Connell Center for Drug and Health Studies, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA Using a sample of 118 drug-involved women originally released from prison in the 1990s and reinterviewed between 2010 and 2011, this paper examines the role motherhood played in the desistance process from crime and substance abuse. Interview narratives revealed that motherhood rarely functioned as a turning point per se that activated desistance, but caring for children did serve to solidify prosocial identities once offenders had transformed their addict/criminal identities. Despite Downloaded by [68.82.20.222] at 18:39 17 May 2016 their identity transformations, however, the journey of desistance for the majority of mothers was still a long and arduous path. The reality for these mothers most often resembled a hostile terrain marked by the competing demands of battling addiction, finding employment and suitable housing with a criminal record, establishing visitation and custody rights in family court, and regaining the trust of children and family members who had long ago lost faith in their commitment to their families. This research illuminates the complexities inherent in the desistance process for a contemporary sample of drug involved adult women entrenched within the criminal justice system. Keywords desistance, female offenders, motherhood Correspondence should be sent to Ronet Bachman, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA. E-mail: [email protected] MOTHERHOOD AND DESISTANCE 213 INTRODUCTION At the end of 2013, 1,256,300 women in the United States were under some form of adult correctional supervision (Glaze & Kaeble, 2014), and in all racial and ethnic groups a large per- centage of this population was drug users (Carson, 2014). In fact, many of these women cycle in and out of prison for possession charges or for violations of parole or probation (Belknap, 2010). Society and criminal justice policymakers alike have only recently begun to grapple with the factors related to reintegrating formerly incarcerated individuals, and relatively little of this research has been devoted to the female reentry experience. In addition to the significance of theoretical turning points highlighted in the extant life course literature, including a stable marriage and gainful employment (Laub & Sampson, 2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993), several researchers have recently turned their attention to the effect of motherhood status on the desistance process. Although some have found that women with children are more likely to decrease their offending behavior compared to women without children (Giordano, Seffrin, Manning, & Longmore, 2011; Kreager, Matsueda, & Erosheva, 2010; Uggen & Kruttschnitt, 1998), others have found mixed results regarding motherhood and desistance (Giordano, Cernkovich, & Rudolph, 2002; Michalsen, 2011), others have found no impact (Robbins, Martin, & Surratt, 2009; Stalans & Lurigio, 2015), and still others have highlighted the com- pounded strain that motherhood places on an already tenuous reentry journey that follows prison release (Brown & Bloom, 2009; Kubiak, Kasiborski, Karim, & Schmittel, 2012; Leverentz, 2014). Like all desistance research, one of the problems that limits consensus on whether motherhood impacts desistance stems from differences in measurement and samples. For example, some research has relied on community samples of older adolescents who were not necessarily embedded in an adult correctional system (Giordano et al., 2011; Kreager et al., 2010). Other studies have been based on samples of women who have all been detained in adult correctional facilities (Brown & Bloom, 2009; Robbins et al., 2009). The place-of-detention distinction is significant, as studies have demonstrated that individual-level reentry mechanisms are very clo- sely related to the nature of correctional supervision imposed and institutional release planning and support provided (La Vigne, Davies, Palmer, & Halberstadt, 2008; Lynch & Sabol, 2001; Visher & O’Connell, 2012). After a review of this literature, we examine the impact of motherhood on long-term patterns of desistance using qualitative data from a cohort of drug-involved Downloaded by [68.82.20.222] at 18:39 17 May 2016 women who were originally released from prison in the early 1990s and then reinterviewed again between 2010 and 2011. MOTHERHOOD AND DESISTANCE The role motherhood plays in recent theorizing about desistance, including Sampson and Laub’s age-graded social control theory (Laub & Sampson, 2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993), Giordano and colleagues’ cognitive and emotional transformation theory of desistance (Giordano et al., 2002; Giordano, Schroeder, & Cernkovich, 2007), and Paternoster and Bushway’s identity theory of desistance (Paternoster, Bachman, Bushway, Kerrison, & O’Connell, 2015; Paternos- ter & Bushway, 2009), is not an explicit component of each theory, but its relevance is readily apparent. For example, age-graded social control’s theoretical assumptions assert that exogen- ously generated turning points such as finding the right prosocial partner, securing a stable 214 BACHMAN ET AL. and satisfying job, or successfully serving in the military may each serve to increase the likeli- hood of desistance by strengthening conventional social bonds. Like the variables of partnership and good employment, motherhood is also imbued with concepts of discipline, stability, dimin- ished antisocial opportunities, and respectability, and motherhood is typically perceived as a prosocial institution. As such, motherhood may serve in a fashion similar to jobs and marriage to initiate the process of desistance by increasing an individual’s prosocial bonds and leaving him or her with less time and fewer opportunities to engage in crime. In Giordano et al.’s (2002) original formulation, they argued that although turning points such as jobs and marriages, or what they called ‘‘hooks for change,’’ were important for desistance, two types of cognitive transformations must first occur in offenders: They must have a greater openness to change, and they must perceive the hook as being salient or important. Other types of cognitive changes, such as a change in how one views crime and the forming of a new conventional replacement self, occur only after and as a result of involvement in conventional roles or hooks. In their enhancement of this symbolic interactionist theory, Giordano et al. (2007) argued that an additional emotional transformation was also a critical component of desistance. They argued that because many if not most offenders’ lives were riddled with conflict with par- ents and intimate others, these recurring conflicts eventually molded an angry or depressive self in an individual that, if not transformed, would become instrumental in offenders’ continued involvement in crime. In both theoretical iterations, then, a prosocial role like marriage may pro- vide social support for an offender’s initial steps toward desistance from crime by providing help in these requisite cognitive and emotional transformations. Here, too, motherhood may serve as a prosocial role or bond that may serve to help women through the transformation process necessary for desistance. Although turning points do not play a comparable role in the identity theory of desistance (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009), this framework nevertheless allows for a critical analysis of motherhood’s potential significance. The desistance process, Paternoster and Bushway (2009) contended, begins ‘‘when perceived failures and dissatisfactions within different domains in life become connected and when current failures become linked with anticipated future failures’’ (p. 1105), or what Baumeister (1991, p. 304) referred to as the ‘‘crystallization of discontent.’’ These initial moves toward desistance may come about in response to a feared self—an image of what the person does not want to be or fears becoming if he or she does not change. Both Downloaded by [68.82.20.222] at 18:39 17 May 2016 imagining the feared self and acknowledging the possibility of its realization in the future pro- vide the first steps toward desistance, but to maintain these initial steps the offender must eventually craft a new, more positive image of what he or she wants to become, or the possible self. This newly emerging prosocial identity, or possible self, then triggers a change in the person’s preferences for things like quick and easy money or a substance-induced high to more conventional preferences and social networks. It is this cluster of internal changes in identity and preferences and the crafting of the kind of person that one wants to be that both motivates behavior consistent with a prosocial identity (a desire for conventional work, conventional friends, a life free of crime and drugs) and sends a signal to

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